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Canva is seeking a Head of Commercial Legal to lead its global Commercial Legal team. The role is based in San Francisco with flexibility to work hybrid, though Canva's flagship office is in Sydney, Australia.
In this leadership position, you will oversee a high-performing Commercial Legal team responsible for empowering Canva's scalable growth through strategic legal and operational guidance. The team structures, negotiates and manages Canva's customer, partner and supplier agreements, supporting go-to-market efforts, new products and commercial initiatives.
Key responsibilities include:
- Leading and coaching a global Commercial Legal team across multiple timezones
- Setting vision and strategy for how Commercial Legal enables growth while managing commercial risk
- Providing strategic guidance to Canva leadership on material commercial, customer, partner and supplier matters
- Partnering with Sales, Procurement, Finance, Product and other teams to support launches, new business models and strategic initiatives
- Designing scalable commercial legal processes, playbooks, templates and ways of working
- Fostering a high-performance, collaborative culture through thoughtful work distribution, growth and development, team wellbeing and resourcing decisions
- Driving team connection and culture through team rituals and engagement
- Championing Canva's AI Native ways of working and encouraging use of AI tools to streamline workflows
- Managing Commercial Legal budgets and outside counsel engagement
- Monitoring market developments, emerging technologies and legal trends
Canva values flexibility in how and where people work, trusting employees to choose the balance that empowers them and their team.
REQUIREMENTS:
- Leadership & teamwork: Experience managing teams across different timezones in collaborative environments with high autonomy and mutual trust
- Commercial breadth and judgment: Strong experience advising on a broad range of commercial matters including customer, partner, supplier and technology transactions; ability to navigate complex commercial issues and make practical decisions
- Strategic business partnering: Ability to be a trusted adviser to senior business leaders, balancing legal risk with commercial opportunity, and communicating advice clearly to both legal and non-legal stakeholders
- Industry context: Experience advising technology companies, understanding how legal considerations intersect with product development and go-to-market strategy, comfortable operating amid ambiguity and change
- Building for scale: Experience improving legal processes, using technology effectively and building a function that can support a growing global company
- AI fluency: Comfort with and fluency in AI tools; Canva Legal is on a mission to become an AI Native Legal Team
